Shaping the Profession: Some Thoughts on Office, Duty, and the Moral Problematisation of Professional Activities in the Counter-Reformation

Abstract This paper investigates the theorisation of the duties belonging to different – both lay and professional – conditions, elaborated upon by post-Tridentine moral theology, in order to highlight its contribution to the modern conceptualisation of the profession, and, more generally, to modern economic and political rationality. It focuses particularly on how work and professional activities are dealt with in Juan Azor’s Institutiones morales, Hermann Busenbaum’s Medulla theologiae moralis and Alfonso de Liguori’s Theologia moralis, between the early seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries. The paper begins with some quick historical remarks on the theological elaboration on the states of life (in the context of early-modern political and moral thought on duty and office) and the tradition de officiis underpinning these sources. The specific prescriptions imposed by these sources on professional activities in their discussions of the Third Commandment, and the obligation to rest or fast on certain days, are then examined. A brief analysis of the paragraphs explicitly devoted to the duties of professionals (legal and health professionals in particular) precedes some final observations about the post-Tridentine model of profession and its influence on the moral and socio-political valorisation of professional activities.